After working way too hard to make a simple ball of mozzarella (4 times a charm), I now have the necessary ingredients and accoutrement. Namely, I have citric acid, good rennet tablets and a properly calibrated Hanna pH meter (hey don't laugh at my little crappy pH meter! It can hear you!).
Tonight I'm making some curd for a microwave mozz that I'll serve tomorrow when my mom comes over.
I am using nearly 2gal of storebought whole milk, a little calcium and some lipase, and a full rennet tab so I don't have to wait all night. I added ctiric acid in solution until I got a pH of 5.50.
More to come.
Good pH point for "quick" mozzarella, Lennie. Good luck! :)
Yes, and the full tab of rennet started working very quickly, I'd say I'll have a good firm curd within 30min. I probably could've gone with 1/2 tab, if I could get one to break in half of course.
What time is it where you are Pavel? 8PM CST here. Wine is flowing.
7-08 AM. Early morning :)
Hope your day goes better than mine. All bad news at work.
The cheese has nearly a clean break after 13 minutes, clearly a bit too much rennet but it will be OK. Waiting 30 minutes anyway.
What was the temperature of your milk when you add acid? Have you small curd particles above the solid mass? I always have.
Not so much really. This milk set up quickly and completely on top. I had a few small curds from the acid treatment but I stirred those in as much as possible.
Visit my goat milk thread tomorrow and tell me what I did wrong. i know I will do something wrong!
My curd turned out fairly moist, somewhat delicate and kind of sticky but I think this bodes well for its melting. I'm waiting for that until tomorrow, I'm draining the curds in cheesecloth now and will refrigerate until tomorrow when I have guests and can serve freshly heated/stretched balls of mozzarella.
Curds looked pretty good after a good long drain. I might have let them get slightly matted. Is that when you don't stir enough and a large mass kind of fuses together, impeding draining? A bit of this seems to have been like that. I was probably overly concerned about not shattering the curds.
Anyway, I'll find out about the melting properties later and maybe post a pic.
I salted the curd a bit this morning, and drained the bit of whey that had come out.
Here are a couple photos of the process.
When i make mozz and don't get matted together mass of curds after draining i know that something's wrong. Usually i have one solid bulk of curds even if it was 10 gal of milk butch. And i never try to cut it. I just add hot water and start to work it.
Ah, well maybe this isn't so bad then. I microwaved a couple minutes this morning and it worked great! Came smooth and shiny without having to fight it. As you can see I cheat and work it with the spatula.
Congratulations, Lennie! Seems like you've done it finally? :D
Congrats that looks good. Hope your Mum likes it.
It went over well with some homebrew. The family played a game of Cranium, an interesting game that only took an hour to play.
Plenty left over for an eggplant lasagna, ricotta and mozz over the top.
Way to go Lennie I knew you could do it!
You have more confidence in me, than I do!
I brought a small chun of mozz to work today to put on a "chicken parmesan" made with my ricotta. I pulled some pieces an spread them on this chicken and microwaved. The mozzarella melted very nicely and was a fine topping for this dish! I was happy t say the least, I have a large ball of this cheese still. Might have to make homemade pizza.
Good job! Sounds like you got the hang of it.